Painting Pictures In The Sky
by Sybella
Summary: Nate/Serena. "They are ten when he first kisses her, their noses bumping together in the darkened bedroom." N and S one shot- it's my first time with this pairing. Be gentle- review please. Title from the Taylor Swift song "I'm Only Me When I'm With You."


**Painting Pictures in the Sky**

They are ten when he first kisses her, their noses bumping together in the darkened bedroom. Erik is already asleep beside them, the duvet wrapped around his legs. Serena is cold all over, everywhere but her lips which are pressed against Nate's.

She'd been crying earlier and her hot chocolate was salty as a result. She doesn't like Lily's new boyfriend and though she's already nine years past caring, this one's worse than the rest so she's having a bit more trouble than usual trying to bite back the tears. Chuck would have sneered, told her not be such a girl and Blair would have smothered her.

Nate just shuffles beside her as they climb into breath and when the lights go out he kisses her for comfort because that is what his daddy does when his mother cries.

Serena kisses back but pulls away quickly, her hand still folded into his. Her free fingers curl into a fist and she punches him lightly because they're ten and he's already Blair's. And he tastes like peppermint and cherry which means sometime between brushing their teeth in the large gold sink and now, he snuck a candy and didn't share.

"Ow." He drops her hand to rub his shoulder and then she's twisted away in the sheets.

He rolls onto his back and stares at the cream colored ceiling with its scallops and its intricate carvings that sort of make his head ache, wishing the sky would tear through.

***

Nate becomes captain of his hockey team at sixteen.

His first big game is on a Saturday. Blair bakes cookies and Chuck slips hash into them when she isn't looking. They're the chocolate chip (weed) sort. She comes to watch him play, kisses him prettily and sits down on the chairs with Chuck, her hands folded in her lap like a lady and her red little mouth pursed as his best friend tries to explain the finer points of the game to her.

(Chuck know nothing, of course. But it's a good excuse to lean in close to the brunette so he takes what he can get.)

Nate stands in the sidelines, his helmet under one arm and his eyes scour the crowd for a halo of blonde hair. The game starts in two minutes and the seat next to Blair's is empty.

He sighs and moves to put on his helmet when a cloud of white almost knocks him to the floor.

"I'm so sorry, Natie." She kisses him, too. On his cheek but he turns to quick and her lips land on the corner of his mouth. Their blue eyes meet through the blond curtain of her hair.

"Good luck," she whispers before whisking herself off.

Serena's late but she always comes. He won't forget that next time.

***

The summer before senior year, he goes to the Hamptons and joins a book club.

The first book they read is Pride and Prejudice. The hero is far too much of a prig for him to stomach and the girl sort of reminds him of Vanessa and just another relationship that he totally screwed up. He sits through the next meeting with nothing to say but takes his faux reading glasses with him and perches them at the edge of his nose.

He calls Chuck at night, tells him he hates Jane Austen and the Hamptons and life. There is a bitter laugh at the other end.

"I don't think you'll hate it for long. Serena's joining you."

And she does.

They go to book club together. Serena laughs at his glasses, clutching her waist breathlessly when he insists they look sexy. Nate sulks. "_Blair_ would have thought they looked sexy too."

Serena stiffens. Sobers and pulls her hand out of his.

Across the room, there's a woman winking at him. Torn between gratification and anxiety, Nate pulls up his book and tucks the glasses in his back pocket.

He still thinks they're studly.

***

They go to a party one night.

Nate puts on his best suit, the silk tie his mother gave him for his birthday and picks up Serena at eight. He rolls back his heels as he waits and can't quite his excitement because they've done a lot of things together, but they've _never_ done this.

It's always been Blair on his arm and Serena in coat rooms and closets and hotel bars.

His heart stops when she sails down the stairs. The dress is long, fluttering around her ankles and probably one of their friends could describe it, judge it better.

All Nate knows is that it's gold and it's beautiful and so is Serena. She smells like spring flowers and sex and he's never been prouder to twirl a girl on the crook of his elbow, where her fingers rest.

They sit together, three tables away from the singles and the woman with the arched eyebrows from book club is still eyeing him. Serena's giggling and there's a flute of champagne twisted in her fingers and he cannot help but lean into her.

"Remember the last time you wore gold."

He's thinking of her thighs pressed into his waist, he's thinking of swallowing her moans that taste likes strawberries and champagne and love and he's thinking of her mouth wide and open and hot, never quite leaving his. He thinks of being worried that he isn't good at this but remembering that Serena might be late but she always comes.

He's thinking of falling in love with her on a bar stool.

Serena shivers and he watches her blue eyes widen. There is sadness there and Nate feels like he's been doused with cold water. Because of course. The last gold dress she wore was Cotillion. He left early after punching out Carter Baizen but he remembers seeing the Gossip Girl blast when he woke up in the morning with Blair snuggled into his side.

It was a picture of Serena in a gold dress. With Daniel Humphrey.

He thinks he'd felt something. Even then.

Some small twinge of regret but then there was Blair, naked and warm and curled up with him under the cashmere sheets with her head on his chest, so he put down the phone.

And that was that.

The woman with arched eyebrows slinks over to their table, purring suggestions in his ear and her foot against his calf. So, he fucks her in the ladies room because Serena's mouth is tight and her eyes are distant.

And he thinks she's thinking of someone else and it's surprisingly hard to bear.

***

He spends one week at the Humphrey residence. Keeps his phone in his hand, but Chuck doesn't call. Vanessa doesn't call. Sometimes, he'll scroll down the list of numbers and linger over Blair's name or Serena's.

He doesn't press the button. There is still that green sweater of his, with a hole in the sleeve where a little gold heart once was. There's a still a picture in the foyer of his brownstone with the two girls who were once his family, wrapped in plaid and argyle with bright smiles painted across their mouths.

Rufus plays old tunes on the sort of gramophone that is part relic, part function. V would know what the song is called. Maybe Dan but Jenny just rolls her kohl lined eyes when he asks. She is tacking up a dress and her mouth is full of pins which makes talking hazardous. She attempts it anyway, gesticulating wildly towards Dan rooms and Nate thinks it would be entertaining to just watch her mime being a notebook.

He isn't really that cruel, so he goes into the next room to fetch said notebook. A folded page falls to floor as he tugs at the pile, fluttering down like a secret.

Curiosity gets the better of him. Most things tend to get the better of Nate.

His heart sinks as his eyes flick over the smudged words. It's a story, one of Dan's and two sentences in and he's already figured out the subject. A beautiful debutante who breaks the heart of a tortured young poet.

Nate knows nothing- nothing- about literature. But he wonders why the Fitzgerald female of the story sounds nothing like his Serena.

His Serena likes long walks on the beach and chocolate sprinkles on her ice cream and she doesn't care about Ivy League colleges or pearls. There is love spelled out on the page but Nate wonders if Dan is really in love with Serena. Or if he is just in love with the girl that he thinks she is.

A girl who sounds an awful lot like Blair Waldorf.

***

Gossip Girl looks back at the last two years of his life and all she can gleam is "whore".

His grandfather's betrayal, his father's embezzlement charges- all par for the course. The only memory his class mates will take of him is "whore."

Nate's surprisingly cool with this. He's never really cared how the Penelopes of the world have viewed him. But he knows that Blair does, Serena too (even if she won't admit it.)

So he joins the hunt to take down Gossip Girl. It's a fitting end- not _with a bang but with a whimper_. Blair and Chuck find each other and Serena's with Carter and he's with Vanessa (just friends, ok.)

It's all sorted.

He feels the pit of his stomach drop out and tries to push back the feeling that this isn't how it should be. That he should be headed to Hamptons for the summer with Chuck and Serena and Blair. They should lie around and sunbathe and drink mimosas.

Blair will get sun burnt and spend the rest of the month hiding out behind Jackie O sunglasses and sarongs, Chuck will have sex with a waitress and get them kicked out of restaurants (he'll but them later and fire the manager) and Serena will get drunk and fall in love with the sunset all over again.

Things change. Sure- it's the way of life.

This doesn't mean Nate Archibald has to like it.

***

Columbia doesn't work out. Not really.

Blair and Chuck are shacked up and across the city and being in the same room as them is painful. He isn't jealous- it's over with him and Blair, really.

But he's never been a third wheel before. And he realizes that it isn't exactly his idea of fun, so he packs his bags and heads to Brown.

"Natie!" Serena is pleased- _ecstatic_ to see him and she leaps across the hall and into his arms.

Grandfather makes an extra phone call. He gets a place near campus and leaves a key on the blonde's doorstep. Then he turns on the television, makes ice cream sundaes with sprinkles and hot chocolate and waits for the chance they never had.

She turns up only hours later, hand propped up against the door, her hips swung to one side and she leans into him till their mouths meet and this the way things start. Not with a bang but with the whimper of longing that slips between their lips and she sighs. Slides her tongue across his jaw and licks off the ice cream that's waiting on the counter for her, fingers clutching the back of his shirt.

Nate Archibald is a gentleman. He straightens up, lifts his new girlfriend of the floor and sweeps her into the bedroom. And when she's stretched out on the bed all flushed and gorgeous and all his- he can't help but think one thing.

That his life is a road. And all it's ever led to is this.

A/N: So this is Nate/Serena. I love them but I prefer writing Nate and Vanessa and Carter and Serena. However- I had this idea and I just couldn't get it out of my head. Please review- I would really appreciate it.


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